


five flucloxacillin

by torrentialTriages



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everybody Lives, Gen, and the consequences of dealing with them yourself, hand and arm injuries, slightly unhealthy codependency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 21:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12197679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: In the wake of coming home, Jacobi's just digging himself a hole, and digging, and digging.





	five flucloxacillin

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You Crash Standing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053763) by [thought](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought). 



> im not entirely satisfied with how this ends, but i've stared at it long enough please take it. title taken from los campesinos!' song of the same title. 
> 
> set in thought's "everyone survives and lives in a house with koudelka (except kepler fuck kepler)" au, based on an exchange lovelace and koudelka have. i love the wonder twins theyre so disastrous :(

The Goddard therapist they worked with before Wolf 359 would probably say that they're trying to outrun the memories of Kepler, to erase what he was to them, but that's some bullshit he's not willing to admit is true. Maxwell runs to stop feeling at all, and Jacobi - Jacobi thinks even after all Kepler's done to him, to them, even after Kepler left them high and dry and risked their lives without batting an eyelash - Jacobi, pathetically sentimentally, thinks he might be running to erase who he's been without Kepler.

Not like he'll tell the Hephaestus crew. Why would he? He doesn't owe them, he and Maxwell don't need to trust them and they don't need to trust the two of them, but that's okay, it's always been them against the world, featuring Kepler, even if Maxwell's never understood his orbit around Kepler she understands _him,_ they're all the other needs.

So. They've been running.

Geneva is fucking lovely, of course, he's sure, they live in a picturesque neighborhood and it's all sickeningly idyllic, neighbors nodding at them in German and French that Maxwell answers back in pleasantly but curtly enough for them to pull back a little. It's fine. He doesn't care. What they do care about is the long, winding roads up and down hills that let them explore, pushing their orientation skills and bodies to the point of delirious dissociation, anything to get away from their own flesh.

The point that they forget about Kepler, they agree, the point that they forget their selves and just start feeling the immediacy of their own bodies screaming for relief, that's the good stuff right there. That's the best part of Switzerland.

 

So he falls, so he trips or something, so Maxwell swears up and down she was right behind him, tasting blood in her throat, and he was the first to go down because his legs just collapsed under him. Scout's honor, Jacobi. Word of God. The irony of saying that be damned. All he remembers is skidding on the gravel, tripping on the curb halfway down, flesh hand out before he could process what was happening - burning pain - _searing_ -

" _Ah fuck,_ " he screams despite himself, shoulder popping, and suddenly everything feels sickeningly intense. He doesn't want to be in this body - he wants to be far away, and he would be far away if it wasn't for the searing in his hand and arm and -

Maxwell drops to his side. "Jacobi? Jacobi!"

"Shoulder," he gasps through clenched teeth, resting on his prosthetic elbow, barely able to unscrunch his face. "Put it back." And she does when it registers, deadly calm, gripping his bicep, giving him a low count of three, and the _chok_ sound grates through his corpse, because there's no way he's still alive after the sheer magnitude of this pain, there's no way he still wants to be in this body.

Why does it hurt more now? Last time he dislocated his shoulder, in Bogotá, it didn't hurt as much - he's out of shape, when it comes to exercising, when it comes to pain. He knows. He can't forgive himself for his circumstances, he has to get back to who he was back when he had someone to answer to.

"Jacobi? Jacobi. How are you feeling?" Her hand is rubbing circles on his back, and he knows it's learned, all of their behaviors are learned when it comes down to it, but fuck it helps.

He snorts, gasps ragged. "'M fine. It's good. Let's just get back so I can get - cleaned up." He holds up his palm, scraped raw and bleeding, and Maxwell nods, hoisting him up, and they hobble back to the house together, through the backalleys and backyards so the neighbors won't stare.

 

They get into the house without anyone giving them weird looks. He's going to have to just pop them back in himself, he decides. He absolutely wants to avoid the hospital as much as he can, for every single reason ever, and he's done this before. Not exactly his hand, but the premise must be easy enough to grasp. As much grasping power as his hand has right now.

It still protests unbearably when he presses his hand against the desk in the room Koudelka and Minkowski have given them (maybe out of a sense of guilt, which he can't say he minds at all), but he grits his teeth against the shirt stuffed in his mouth, steeling himself, and voids his mind of all thought to be able to just move, striking the back of his hand and something shifts and it should be in the right place, right - he and Maxwell are no medical experts, but the pop of his hand must mean he's doing something right, right?

Whatever the case, it fucking hurts like a _bitch_.

"It'll go down," he tells Maxwell, "WebMD says so."

Maxwell looks affronted. "You use WebMD?"

"It was the first search result!"

She rolls her eyes. "Well, there's a first for everything." She gingerly inspects the hand, Jacobi trying not to wince audibly as she carefully turns it this way and that. "In any case, looks like you did the right thing. Yay, Internet." She returns his hand to him, and he cradles it to his chest. "All you can do is wait."

"I hate waiting," he grumbles.

"I know."

They wait.

 

It doesn't go back to normal. Four days, four days, four _fucking_ days, Maxwell sneaking food and painkillers (light ones - he wants to be able to know if it gets better or worse) for him, getting a kettle just for them, bags and bags filled with snacks and ramen. Four days braced against the heat and throbbing searing of his wrist, and he knows it's no use comparing the swelling to his almost-skeletal prosthetic, but something's definitely wrong. He keeps looking at Maxwell's wrists, honestly, because she's the only person he's seen in as many days. He knows this isn't right.

"Alana-"

"Daniel." Gripping his other hand, warm on the prosthetic's metal.

"Alana - listen - listen. If I lose this fucking hand - Maxwell - if I lose it we - I've been looking at labs that do prosthetics research, we gotta - get in - you'll build me a hand, right? A new hand?"

"Absolutely," Maxwell says.

"And - I can amputate it myself for you - if not I just fucking die."

"We die together, Daniel. All else fails, we die."

He cracks a weak smile, fond and - and, yeah, frightened. "I still vote we get into a car accident."

She tsks. "And I said hanging was the obvious solution."

He is silent for a moment. "If we hang ourselves Hera will rat us out."

"Mm." She shrugs, considering it. "I'd hate for them to _pity_ us."

"Ugh, the fucking look on Eiffel's face."

"Like a kicked puppy." Jacobi barks a laugh, dissolving into snickers. He'd liked Eiffel, before the rebellion, but Maxwell's scorn is all he really needs to feel whole. She lies down, rubbing her thumb over the skin between his thumb and hand, and that distracts from the sickening throb in his arm.

"I miss him," comes out as a pathetically weak whisper, face buried in the borrowed sheets, focusing on only the pain in his hand, and Maxwell.

Maxwell stills, though not tense. Of course she knows who 'he' is. "I know."

 

Of course Lovelace finds out. Of course. Couldn't keep her fucking nose out of their business.

"What the fuck's going on?" Straight to the point.

"Go away," he mumbles into the pillow. There would be no beating around the bush here, Captain.

"Jacobi - are you..."

"Shut up," he snaps, "Go away!"

"Real mature," she growls, stepping into the room, one hand resting on the doorframe, and Maxwell gets up from the mattress, a physical barrier that Lovelace peers over easily. "God, what happened to you?"

"None of your business." Maxwell pulls her away.

"You're in this house, we all look after each other." Lovelace turns to look at Maxwell. "What happened?"

"Don't tell her."

"What _happened?_ "

Maxwell looks at the corner of the room as she decides Jacobi's health is more important than his wishes. "Jacobi... he dislocated part of his hand when we went running."

"Maxwell? Fuck you."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

Jacobi scoffs loudly. Maxwell rolls her eyes. "Us? Trust you? Good joke, Captain."

Lovelace shakes her head. "Okay. Never mind, forget that. We've got to get a doctor to look at this, I - whatever you did, it's obviously not working."

"Fuck. You," Jacobi repeats, louder, as if saying it enough times will dissuade Lovelace, but she shakes her head again.

"None of us are qualified enough, Jacobi, unless you want Hilbert sticking his nose in your business, okay? And - look, you get visiting priority, right, Maxwell, I mean, you're related and all, they should-"

"We're not," Maxwell says primly, sitting down, and Jacobi knows it's her way of snapping at people before she actually needs to snap at them. It's endearing.

Lovelace gapes a little. "What?"

"We're not related. Blood, adoption, what have you." She leans back with her arms folded, hip against Jacobi's forehead.

"To assume makes an ass out of you and me," quips Jacobi, in his best Kepler impersonation. Maxwell snickers despite the tension of the atmosphere.

Lovelace slumps against the doorframe, running a hand through her hair. "Jesus, I didn't - I could've asked earlier."

"Yeah, you could've." Maxwell shrugs. "It'd be nice if you could leave us alone now, though. Thanks."

Lovelace stares at them, frowning, chewing on the inside of her mouth. After a while, she says, finally, "This isn't over."

"Let me guess, 'you'll be back'?" quips Jacobi, in what he feels is a pretty decent Terminator impersonation.

Lovelace grimaces at him. "Don't give me that shit. I'll be back." And then she's out the door, which closes gently behind her.

"She'll be back," Jacobi tells Maxwell, feeling a little disoriented now that he doesn't have to pretend to feel up to par to Lovelace. "Fuck. I don't wanna - they'll take us away. Fuck."

She squeezes his prosthetic hand. "They can try. We won't let them."

Her confidence and calmness soothe that little wriggling anxiety in his chest, and he closes his eyes. "Back to how it always was, eh? Us against them."

"Yeah. And we're gonna win."

"We sure fucking are."


End file.
